Little Star
by Sarah the nerd
Summary: A young girl is sent to see her father for the first time in years. He lives in a dark, cold prison cell.


I awoke to silence. Usually my mother could be heard moving around the house, but not today. Afraid, I went downstairs, and found her entering through the front door. She must have been speaking to someone outside. She was crying.

"Mama?" I asked, in a squeak. "What is it?"

My mother took a second to compose herself. When she spoke, it was with horribly forced cheer.

"Dearest- today we must-"

She swallowed and knelt down next to me, and hid her face for a second. When she looked up at me she was smiling, and her voice was sweeter. "Catherine, your father. Do you know where he lives?"

I did not. I hadn't seen him for four years. He sent me letters and gifts, a drawing of Paris from above for my seventh birthday, but I had long since forgotten his face. "No."

"He lives nearby. Today, you're being sent to see him."

She dressed me in my best dress. I disliked it and in fact rarely wore it: the stitching was coming apart and it smelled musty and stale. After that particular day, though, I was never asked to wear it again.

Mother brushed my hair and tied it up with bows before she led me outside. We walked through the city centre, past the church of Saint Jacques, to a dark and forbidding building. And my mother let go of my hand, and I was scared.

"I don't want to go in there, Mama."

"This is where your father is," Mama said, and she looked up to acknowledge someone else. This person was dressed like a businessman, all in black, his face was drawn but his eyes were kind.

"Musichetta," he said to Mama.

"Marius," she said to him. "Please- don't let her hear too much - shield her eyes- and she mustn't stay there too long."

"It's her _father_, 'Chetta."

Mother put my hand into the hand of the man's. It was slightly sweaty, and he smiled at me apologetically.

"Are you quite sure...?" he asked my mother.

"Yes," she answered quietly. "I couldn't bear it."

He nodded and lead me inside. I trembled, but I went.

* * *

Inside it was colder than any winter I'd known, and there was a noise like the rattling of cages.

"I can carry you if you would like," Marius offered. I shook my head.

Down a dark corridor there was a speck of light from a barred window, and as we drew closer I saw several men around, the guards of the prison. Was my father a dangerous man, to be kept caged like this? I felt sick. The prison smelled terrible, too. My throat burned.

They let us through, and I saw my father in the shadows. It should have meant more to me, that moment, but at the time it didn't. I remembered his face a little, I remembered the _eyes_ at least. I had last seen them when I was four years old, on my birthday. I was sure his hands had held me once- "My little star," he'd said.

We seemed very far from that day, and from stars, now. The metal door holding him in closed behind us, and he knelt next to me.

"Catherine," he said.

I didn't want to be so near him. He smelled like he hadn't washed, and he hadn't shaved either, he barely looked like a _man_ to me. And his eyes scared me now, they were staring at me so intently. I looked around the tiny room instead.

Cracks in the wall were plastered over with paintings, paintings of men and angels and some that were both. There were so many, and it seemed that once he had run out of paper and paint he had started to draw on the walls. _I_ had drawn on the walls when I was tiny. Having something in common with him suddenly served to humanise him-

"_Catherine_," he said again. He looked up at Marius, and then back to me. And then there was a terrible awkward silence, and he finally broke it with a wry smile and the words:

"So, your mother. Does she still ban all liquor from her house? Still preach about the evils of drink?"

"Yes," I said, confused as to how he would know or remember that. "She won't allow even wine past our front door."

My father laughed. It was a broken laugh, though, I never in my life got to hear his real one. "Good." He turned his attention then to the man who had lead me inside.

"This is the Baron Marius Pontmercy, my lawyer and my friend," said my father. "Maybe you remember him? He held you often when you were a baby."

I didn't remember him, but it was clear now that he remembered me. He bowed his head and blinked as he turned away.

"R," he said to my father, "why bring the child to this terrible place? There's no need to say your goodbyes just yet. There still may be hope."

Father just smiled at him. "How is your lady wife?" he asked, after a long pause where neither spoke a word.

"She was distressed this morning; she'll be more so tomorrow. Let me help you, Grantaire!"

"You've done all you can, and more. You're already treading dangerous ground." My father drew me closer, and turned me to face Marius. "I have but one request for you," he said to him. "I know I don't have to put it in words." And then, ever so slightly, he loosened his hold on me. I don't think he did it consciously, but he was unwinding the ties that bound us.

"Consider it done, old friend," said Marius sadly.

I knew they were talking about me and my future, and I suddenly realised why I had never once in my life gone hungry or cold, not even when my mother ceased her factory work, not even when we were forced to move. It seemed now that I was the child of many parents, and most of them I hadn't even known. My father turned me around again then to face him.

"Your mother is a good woman," he said gently to me. "She seeks to save me even now, yet it seems she cannot bear to actually _see _me. I don't blame her. She was a good friend to me when I needed one most and deserved one least. Look after her." I just nodded. He carried on.

"I fear I have disappointed her. After all, before you were born, I bitterly disappointed one I loved dearly." He and Marius shared a significant look. "I pray not to leave any more hurt and failure in my wake. This is for you and this is for her." I didn't know what he meant, but then he knelt by the grey mattress in the corner and pulled two envelopes out from underneath. He put them in my hand and curled my fingers around them.

"Read yours whenever you're ready. Whether it's today, or fifty years hence...or not at all."

"Yes, father," I said. I had never in my life called a man _father_, so he in turn must have never been _called_ father, and he smiled sadly at me.

"Marius will return you to your mother," he said. "She will be waiting. She may be weeping too, comfort her if you can. Tell her I will be thinking of you, and her, and all of them." He kissed my forehead. "And tell her my existence is not my own, it never has been, it belongs fully and completely to others. All that's left now is a body. Maybe she will take comfort in that."

It didn't sound comforting at all to me, but I was so young, I barely understood at all. Which is why I said, "But when will I see you again...father?"

My father swallowed. I think his eyes filled with tears. "When you read that letter," he said. "Then you will see me again."

I nodded, still not quite comprehending, but a _little_ reassured. I wished my mother was there, it was a rare occasion I was parted from her for so long. But she was not.

Marius and my father embraced tightly while I watched the guards on the other side of the bars. They were coming closer, and then the locked door was opened, and the metal against metal made a dark _clang._

"Your time is up," said the man. I think he actually said it rather kindly, though perhaps he wasn't supposed to. "Monsieur, take the child. You must leave."

Marius broke away from my father, clasped his shoulder briefly, and then bent down to take my hand.

"Say goodbye to your father, Catherine," he said, and I did so. My father rested his hand on the top of my head.

"Goodbye, little star," he said. And then I was lead away, and I heard the door and the lock slide back into place.

"Are _you_ to be my father now?" I asked the Baron as we walked away. We were not yet outside, and to this day I hope and pray my father never heard those words.

"No, your father has entrusted you to me. Also, he loves you a great deal, even though he was never made to be a father, he _does_. I am returning you to your mother now."

We were moving into the bright light outside. It stung my eyes. "Monsieur, why does my father live in such a place?"

Marius considered this for some time. He blinked frantically, perhaps because we had stepped out into daylight, but perhaps not. "He lives there," he finally said, "so others...may _not _live there in future."

It occured to me that perhaps he couldn't answer my question, that he too was cast adrift in a frightening world, and that thought would have scared me more had I not seen my mother then. I ran to her, and she gathered me up in her arms. She exchanged many words with Marius, but I didn't hear them. Safe in her arms, I feared to ask any of the questions on my lips, it would mean trading the safety for reality. I could not do that. I was _eight_.

Halfway home I remembered the letters and stuffed them into Mama's hand- she did not weep, and thanked me. Then when I asked my father's name, she did not weep, and answered me. She did not weep at all, in fact, until we passed the guillotine.

* * *

That night, Mama placed my father's letter by my bedside as she kissed me goodnight.

"Catherine, tomorrow I will not be here." My heart leapt in my mouth before I realised what she meant. "I will be at dinner with a friend, I will return in the evening. You are to stay here and provide for yourself today." I tried to protest, but she shushed me. "Madame Joly will come and sit with you come the afternoon."

"Mother, I will be _bored_."

"Perhaps she will teach you to sew."

"Sewing is for seamstresses!"

"You will watch your dismissive tone when you speak of women's occupations," Mama said. She pulled the covers around me. "And you will behave yourself. She too was a mother once."

I nodded. I fell asleep almost instantly, thinking about the dull day that lay before me, rather than about my mother and father. That was childish selfishness and innocence, and it was my last ever night of it.

* * *

This time I awoke to a cry: I don't know even now if it came from a dream or from the street outside. I lay in bed for some time, then I pulled myself out and searched the house for Mama. She was not there. I was alone.

I returned to my room. For reasons I never knew, I pressed myself close to the window. Perhaps I wanted to feel the cold of the outside world on my face, because it was cold that day. It was summer, but it was cold.

Two young boys were walking down the street, I saw them and heard them from where I was crouched. "We'll have money for a feast tonight," the older one was saying, "people are so careless at events like that. They come to watch a head roll and neglect to use their _own_ heads while they have 'em! They'll be easy pickings."

I understood, and the understanding came not with a flash of brilliance but a dull, sickening thud. I did nothing about it, I remained where I was. I think I had worked out for myself that the man I saw yesterday was fated to die, but the true horror of it all had not registered, my mother and father had protected me well.

The boys were walking away. They actually weren't as young as I'd first thought, they were approaching their teens, they were just shrivelled by starvation. If I had been a different sort of child I would have opened the window and followed them, but I was not that sort of child, and it took almost a hour of painful thoughts before I gathered up a shawl and left through the front door. Such was the state of my mind that I didn't give a thought to Madame Joly and the panic she might suffer later. I just walked away.

It was not long before I found the mob.

I know my mother was there, and Marius Pontmercy and his wife Cosette. (She was seven months pregnant, I found out later, and she drew furious attention as she rallied against the crowd.) They didn't see me, I barely saw them, and to this day not a single one of my parents know I was ever there.

My father never knew either. I was near the guillotine, nearer than most of the wide-eyed street children dared go, my small size had helped me wind my way to there. But I was at an angle, it was far from the best seat in this terrible theatre. He didn't see me.

I saw him, I heard him. I was near enough to touch him, almost. He looked old and afraid when they dragged him out, just for a second, before he found his courage.

"Long live the Republic! Long live the revolution," he shouted.

In his last few seconds of life he scanned the crowd for my mother and his friends. He must have seen them, because he raised his hand. Then, before he could be pushed, he almost collapsed on the bottom of the guillotine.  
I wanted to look away, I had to look away, but I couldn't.

As the blade rose, my father looked straight ahead and fixated on one spot, and then I think he smiled.

"Enjolras. I hoped you would come. Am I permitted now, to stand alongside you?"

I jammed my eyes tightly shut. I heard the blade fall, but I didn't see it. I've pictured it a thousand times in my head, but I'm so glad I never saw it.

The crowd made a noise that thundered in my ears, but I couldn't make out a single word. I would have liked to fall dizzily to the ground, but I feared the crowd pushing down on me. Suddenly, a hand caught my shoulder.

"There's a green one here! Just look at her, brother, you were like her once!" It was a boy speaking. "She cowers and cries at the sight of a little blood!"

"_They killed my father_!" I screamed at them.

The boys backed away instantly. I don't think they had ever considered they might meet the children of the condemned in the crowd before, I doubt it ever occured to them that the people they watched die _had _children, they looked horrified. The younger one almost tripped over his own feet.

"Hide your eyes!" said the older one. "You should hide your eyes." I realised they were the same two boys I'd seen from the window, at the same time I realised they were showing me kindnesses they themselves had most likely never recieved. "I didn't mean to mock you. Take my hand, I'll get you out of here."

I did. I think I closed my eyes again, and I felt the brush of people's clothes and hands, they felt like ghosts reaching for me, and when I opened my eyes again we were safely away. Out of the crowd, at least. The boys looked at me, looked at each other, and started to run.

"Wait!" I cried. The youngest one stopped, and I ripped my shawl from around my shoulders and gave it to him. There were a million reasons why, but I didn't think of any of them at the time, I just did it. It was growing so very cold.

Both of them fled without another word and, knees shaking, I made my way home. I entered through the window. Madame Joly hadn't arrived yet: when she did I told her I was ill and she let me retire to bed. She didn't look surprised.

I lay there til my mother arrived. I didn't know what I would say to her til I said it. "Did you enjoy your dinner, Mama?"

"Yes," said Mama. Her ordinarily pale complexion had turned paler still. "Catherine, you know I love you."

"Yes, Mama..."

"And your father loves you too."

"Yes," I said, more hesitantly.

She wrapped her arms around me. "I wish you could have met _all _those who would have loved you," she said sadly. Then she left the room. I heard her talking with other people downstairs: Madame Joly and the Pontmercys, perhaps. It was still so cold.

I reached for the letter left by my bedside, and, huddling my bedcovers around me, I opened it. It was short (perhaps it had _had _to be short), but it looked like my father had agonised for hours over each word-

_My daughter, my little star,_

_You deserve the truth, my dear one. I was not a good man. I spent my youth in the company of good men, but I wasn't one of them. I hope they will forgive me should we meet again. There are times it breaks my heart that I am still earthbound while they lie among the stars, but whenever I'm given news of you I have strength again._

_You also must know that although I loved your mother, it was not as a wife. She longed for a child, and our union brought forth you, a great gift to us both, but the cores of our hearts were given to others. She always understood._

_And of course you may already know that I have willfully, and enthusiastically, engaged in treason. I pray this will never put you at a disadvantage later in life. Be good to your mother, and keep your friends close. Don't grieve for me, as I fear you never knew me well enough to get a clear picture of what (if anything) you were losing. I wish you all the love and the happiness on earth._

_Your father._

I lay in the bed with the letter clutched to my chest. A draught blew through the window. I missed my shawl, it had been the only one I'd had.

And although he'd told me not to, I grieved.


End file.
